I recently watched a monologue a former student put up on Facebook. I was crestfallen. It was completely projected. The use of time was completely fake. There was nothing that wasn’t pre-rehearsed, hadn’t had the good stuff completely consciously rehearsed out of it. It was not connected to something deeper – although I believe the actor believed that it was. It makes me sad. And it’s a cautionary tale that actors lose the ability to know sometimes whether their work is good or not. And their friends, unfortunately, will encourage the bad work because they are laymen that don’t know better.

This is why you go back to your training. Why you go back to your coach, instructor, mentor. To make sure that the forces that be do not seduce you back into superficial and mediocre versions of yourself. And this is why you finish your training and you keep working with a coach until both of you are satisfied that your skills truly are skills that you cannot be seduced away from and that they will last a lifetime.